Rousseff quiet as Cuban blogger denied travel to Brazil

The response from Cuban officials did not take anyone by
surprise. Prominent Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez had been, once again, denied
permission to leave her country after she was granted a visa by the Brazilian Embassy
in January to attend a film festival. "I feel like a hostage kidnapped by
someone who doesn't listen nor provide explanations. A government with a ski
mask and a gun in a holster," tweeted
Sánchez on Friday after the Cuban government denied her request to travel to
Brazil. It was, according to the blogger, the 19th time Cuban officials have
turned down her request to leave the island. As in the past, officials gave no reason for
the rejection.

Brazilian filmmaker Dado Galvao announced Tuesday that he
was postponing the premiere of the documentary "Connection Cuba-Honduras," a
movie about press freedom in both countries, in solidarity with the Cuban
blogger, who participated in the film. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who
visited Cuba last week and declined to meet with Sánchez or any dissidents, spoke
to reporters before Cuba denied the blogger permission to leave the country.
"Brazil gave the visa to the blogger. The rest is not a matter for the
Brazilian government," Rousseff said at the time.

Sánchez's work is well known outside Cuba. She has received
several international awards, including Columbia's University's Maria
Moors Cabot Award for excellence in Latin American reporting, and she blogs
regularly for the U.S.-based Huffington
Post. Sánchez also gained a measure of fame when President Barack Obama
responded to a written
questionnaire she sent to the White House in November 2009.

Sánchez has not only been denied permission to travel abroad
but has suffered official harassment for her work. In early November 2009,
Sánchez and two other independent Cuban bloggers were detained,
harassed, and assaulted by state security agents on their way to a peaceful
march in Havana. Sánchez has also been the victim of smear campaigns in Cuba's
state media, which have described her as a "cybermercenary"
at the service of foreign governments.

A vibrant and enthusiastic independent blogging community
has emerged in Cuba in the past few years, according to CPJ research.
The bloggers, who face severe legal, economic, and technological limitations,
are mostly young and from a variety of professions. They critically examine the
issues that Cubans face daily: food shortages, health care, education, housing
problems, and the lack of Internet access, a 2009 CPJ special
report found.

Free press advocates and Cuban journalists point to Sánchez
as a pioneer in this evolving community. Sánchez, who started blogging in
April 2007, was the first to write under her own byline. Her blog, Generación Y, and several
other Cuban blogs are hosted by the German-based portal Desde Cuba (From Cuba), a place
where, as its introduction says, "citizen journalists" can offer "opinions that
don't have room in official Cuban outlets or any other publication that is
conditioned by political requirements."

Rousseff's first visit to Cuba as president had raised
expectations among some independent reporters, bloggers, and political
dissidents that she would speak about human rights on the island. But the
Brazilian leader stayed away from the topic, sticking instead to the trip's key
mission of developing trade and boosting Cuba's economy. Sánchez wrote a blog entry prior to her
visit, in which she expressed hope that Rousseff's behavior would be
"consistent with the clamor for democracy, instead of opting for a complicit
silence before a dictatorship." But Rousseff's visit learly showed
that Latin American leaders are still reluctant to address Cuba's grave human
rights violations when they travel there.

Carlos Lauría, CPJ's program director and senior program coordinator for the Americas, is a widely published journalist. A native of Buenos Aires, he has written extensively for Noticias, the leading Spanish-language newsmagazine. Follow him on Facebook @ CPJ en Español.

1 comments

This is the perfect hcnace for Pres. Obama to End the Blockade of Cuba. Notice I did not use the false word of "embargo"! This is the longest economic siege in history bar none. 1960 to the present 50 YEARS.!!Then, the semantic juggling practiced by the U.S. government to deceive and confuse (propaganda} as regards its true intentions towards the Cuban Revolution, as a subversive strategy in the field of ideas. Possibly one of the best examples we can invoke to define the most important U.S.measure against the Cuban economy is the substitution of the word "blockade" with "embargo". Their intentions are still very much alive today. If only the AVERAGE U.S. citizens knew what these terrible intentions really are .even right now. President Obama knows and I hope he has at least as much success with ending this Blockade as he had with his Medical Assistance program and his Cleaning Up Wall Street action. Congratulations on that Sir